constituency had cost the family well over eight million dollars, but at least they had put Tommy the Turd where he could do no direct damage to the cement profits. “So what in the name of God is Tommy doing here?” I asked Charlie.
“Plotting, of course.”
“Plotting what?” The Guinness was far too cold, but that was something I would have to learn to live with now I was home again.
Charlie leaned across the bar and lowered his voice. “You know Seamus Geoghegan?”
“Of course I know Seamus. We’re old friends.”
“Well, you know he’s right here in Boston? And that the Brits are trying to extradite him? They failed at their first try, but now they’re having another go in an appeal court. So we need money to defend him.”
“We being the Friends of Free Ireland?” I guessed, remembering that my brother-in-law was now an official of that group.
“You got it, Paulie. Patrick’s on the committee of the Friends now, so he is. Michael Herlihy really runs it, of course, but Michael needs someone to tally up the cash and keep the membership list in order, and Patrick volunteered after he visited Ireland. Did you hear about that? Jasus, but Patrick came back from Belfast with steam coming out of his ears and there’s nothing he won’t do for Ireland these days.” Charlie chuckled and settled his elbows on the bar ready for the pleasure of telling a good story. “Last September he even hired a bus and drove a whole party of us down to Meadowlands in New Jersey. Two British Army bands were putting on a show in the Brendan Byrne Arena, and Patrick had the bright idea of slashing the tires of all the cars in the parking lot. When we reached the place he told us it was a blow for a free Ireland, so it was, but the moment a police cruiser came by, Padraig was running faster than loose shit off a hot shovel!” Charlie laughed. “Mind you, if you listen to him tell the tale now you’d think we won half the battle for Ulster that same night.”
“So now he’s touching Congressman O’Shaughnessy for Seamus’s legal aid?”
Charlie nodded, then held up a warning hand as he saw me turning to leave. “But he says he doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“To hell with that. He’s family, isn’t he? You think he won’t want to welcome me home?” I winked at Charlie, picked up the Guinness and my sea-bag, and went to the snug.
There were five of them in there. Two were strangers, but I knew the other three well enough. There was Patrick himself, Tommy the Turd and, to my surprise, though I should not have been surprised at all, the bright boy of Derry, Seamus Geoghegan himself.
“Who the fuck…” Patrick started to protest when I pushed through the door, then he recognized me and his jaw literally fell open.
I dropped my sea-bag at the door. “Patrick. Congressman,” I greeted them with a nod apiece, then smiled at Seamus. “Hey, you bastard!”
“Paulie!” He stood, grinning, arms spread. “Paulie!” He came round the table and embraced me vigorously.
“Watch my fucking Guinness, you ape!” I protested at his greeting.
“You’re in dead trouble, you know that?” He whispered the urgent words in my ear, then stepped back and raised his voice. “You’re looking grand, so you are! Just grand.”
“And yourself,” I said, then placed what was left of my Guinness on the table. “How are you doing, Patrick? Or is it Padraig now?”
“We’re in executive session here,” he said very pompously.
“Fock away off,” I said in my best Belfast accent. Tommy the Third looked vaguely worried, but that was his usual expression for the Congressman had always gone through life with only one oar in the water. “You remember me, Congressman?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he said, though he did not use my name, which suggested he did not know me from George Washington. “Might I introduce Robert Stitch?” Tommy went on with his customary politeness. He used courtesy as a defense against cleverness, and it worked, for he had a reputation, especially among women, of being an appealingly well-behaved and well-brought-up boy. “Robert is one of my Congressional aides,” he explained now.
Stitch was pure Boston Brahmin, a young codfish aristocrat, who offered me a curt unfriendly nod. He was reserving further judgment till he knew whether I would be a help or a hindrance to his cause.
“And that’s my lawyer, my solicitor like.” Seamus jerked his head toward a wild-haired, bearded and bespectacled man who stood and held out his hand.
“I’m Chuck Sterndale,” the lawyer said with a smile, “it’s good to meet you, whoever you are.”
“I’m Paul Shanahan,” I said.
“Paulie was with me in Belfast, so he was,” Seamus told the room happily. “The first time I did a runner from Derry and the fockers were all over my backside, Paulie put me up in his flat. We had a grand time, didn’t we, Paulie?”
“We had good crack.” I used the old Belfast expression.
“It was good crack, right enough.”
“You’re Irish, Mr. Shanahan?” Stitch asked cautiously.
“By ancestry, but I was born not a mile away from this room, but unlike some I can mention I actually went to Ulster to do my bit for the cause. Of course, I know that slashing tires in the New Jersey Meadowlands advances the struggle gloriously, but it’s not quite the same as pulling a trigger in Belfast.”
That got to Patrick, as I had meant it to. “What the fuck do you know?” His mouth was half full of potato chips that sprayed out across his beer glass as he bellowed at me. “I was in Belfast three years ago, and I fought when I was there! I did my bit! I got beaten up by the fucking Brits! You want to see the fucking scar?” He jerked up his left sleeve where a barely discernible white scratch showed against his
“Oh, that’s terrible!” I mocked him. “What happened, Patrick? Oh no! Don’t tell me you mugged another Salvation Army girl?”
“Fuck you!” He scooped up a handful of chips that he crammed into his mouth as if to show that he had nothing more to say to me. A cigarette was burning in a full ashtray beside him.
Tommy the Turd raised a pacifying hand. “I can vouch for Mr. McPhee’s story. Mr. Stitch was with Mr. McPhee on that day and he will testify that they suffered a clear case of unprovoked British brutality; clear, unprovoked, and blatant.”
“So what happened, diddums?” I asked Patrick.
Patrick glared at me while he tried to decide whether or not to indulge my curiosity, but immodesty got the better of him. “I had a meeting arranged, right? Me and Mr. Stitch were personally invited to meet with some soldiers of the Provisionals. Fellows like Seamus here, the real heroes of Ireland! They wanted a chance to thank us for our support. They’re good-fellows, they are, good fellows. So we were told to go to this abandoned house in Ballymurphy, and we went there in broad daylight, broad daylight! Just me and the Congressman’s aide, and you’ll never believe what happened! Never!”
“Clear, unprovoked, blatant brutality,” Tommy the Turd interjected solemnly.
Seamus winked at me while Robert Stitch, who seemed a good deal less proud of the war story than Patrick, stared at the table. “So tell me what happened,” I invited Patrick.
“There must have been a security lapse,” Patrick said, “because we hadn’t been waiting more than five minutes, not five minutes, and the IRA soldiers hadn’t even had time to arrive, when a British patrol came to the house. They knew we were there all right! They shut off the back entrance and attacked through the front. Attacked! Isn’t that the right word, Mr. Stitch?”
“They rushed the house,” Stitch said gravely.
“They didn’t ask who we were,” Patrick said indignantly, “they just attacked!”
“Blatant, unprovoked, clear brutality,” Tommy the Turd assured me. Stitch visibly winced.
Patrick shook his head modestly. “We fought back, of course. We were just defending ourselves, nothing more, but I tell you, those Brit bastards won’t forget meeting Padraig Aloysius McPhee of Boston, no sir! But there were too many of them, just too many.”
“Naked, unprovoked, blatant brutality,” Tommy the Turd told me, while Seamus held his breath in an attempt not to laugh.
